Abdullah Hasan Safir :
It was a gloomy evening in Sirajganj. The name of this small village is Guner Gati. I came here for the first time in my life. The river Jamuna is very close from here. It might start raining very soon. Everything was just calm and quiet. I was actually looking for someone to talk. Then I found him. His name is Sohel Rana. He was young but depressed.
Sohel started to tell me the story of his life. He was a teenager when he saw the most terrible look of Jamuna. The river was breaking the sides and taking it all. She was hungry. She was dangerous. No one could resist her appetite. She was grasping one house in less than 5 minutes. People were running here and there. They were shouting. They were crying. The air was intoxicated with its howling. They were helpless than ever. All they have earned in their life were devastated before their eyes. It was intolerable. But to save their lives they had to run away. Where would they go? Insecurity overcast them. This is a memory that can never be forgotten. People of his age have grown up with this. In one sense it’s good. To get acquainted with the harsh reality from early life, Sohel Rana would remind those nights throughout his life when he had been sleeping under the open sky. They all took place in WAPDA Road. Hundreds of families were there. They had empathy for each other. Imagine a group of people who have lost everything sitting like they don’t know what to do. Life was like this.
I live in my 5th floor apartment in Dhaka and I never knew what struggle actually is in my life. I love when it’s raining with a mug of coffee in my hand but I didn’t see the other side of rainfall. The village where Sohellive is a low land. It remains under water for at least 3 months in rainy season. People go one place from another by boat. This is one of the remotest places in Bangladesh. There is no electricity where they live. They live in darkness. And they live by floating. No permanent thing in their lives.
As a civil and environmental major, I know that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in South Asia. But I never knew how it really feels to live all the time with disasters. I started my work with a project called Climate Refugees of Bangladesh last year. This project has been led by Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. He is a former Fulbright Science and Technology Fellow and currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant, Cornell University. We have been trying to conceptualize the potential societal effects of climate change and general environmental degradation. We are focusing on the affected people and their stories. As a field researcher, I have been going from place to place to interview them: from the slums of Dhaka, the major capital, to the remotest village nears a billowy river. Some of these people have been forced to leave their homes in search of a new beginning. Some other people have been trying to adapt to this situation.
This project gave me a new perspective. Now, I realize how dangerous the threat of Climate Change for Bangladesh is. The planet we live in is getting warmer every year. We are looking forward to our future anxiously. We might have 1.5 or a 2.0 degree Celsius temperature increase by the end of the century. To save our planet we must stay below 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase. Because according to a study of European Geosciences Union the jump from 1.5 to 2 degrees raises the impact by about one third, of the phenomena studied. Heat waves would last around a third longer or rain storms would be about a third more intense. Also, the increase in sea level would be approximately a third higher and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that much greater. Don’t believe those people who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Homo sapiens held record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinction. Now it’s turn of the nature.
I’m scared. What will happen next if we have more intense disasters? Life loss can’t be reduced after a certain level. How will we handle the load of these climate affected communities? I’ve attended Asia Urban Youth Assembly this year at Melaka, Malaysia co-hosted by UN-Habitat. Where would we find habitation if the whole Bangladesh goes under water within this century? So, I told there as a representative of these people that we should follow an environment friendly development approach. We must have our vision to reduce our temperature increase. This is reality that Bangladesh does have a geographical weakness and adverse hydrological features. We contribute a little in warming but we are the most sufferer. These are the faults in our fate. But as a nation we have never been silent. We will definitely have to be concerned about this temperature increase and projected future problems and their sustainable solutions. Also we must raise our voice for global climate justice.
It was a gloomy evening in Sirajganj. The name of this small village is Guner Gati. I came here for the first time in my life. The river Jamuna is very close from here. It might start raining very soon. Everything was just calm and quiet. I was actually looking for someone to talk. Then I found him. His name is Sohel Rana. He was young but depressed.
Sohel started to tell me the story of his life. He was a teenager when he saw the most terrible look of Jamuna. The river was breaking the sides and taking it all. She was hungry. She was dangerous. No one could resist her appetite. She was grasping one house in less than 5 minutes. People were running here and there. They were shouting. They were crying. The air was intoxicated with its howling. They were helpless than ever. All they have earned in their life were devastated before their eyes. It was intolerable. But to save their lives they had to run away. Where would they go? Insecurity overcast them. This is a memory that can never be forgotten. People of his age have grown up with this. In one sense it’s good. To get acquainted with the harsh reality from early life, Sohel Rana would remind those nights throughout his life when he had been sleeping under the open sky. They all took place in WAPDA Road. Hundreds of families were there. They had empathy for each other. Imagine a group of people who have lost everything sitting like they don’t know what to do. Life was like this.
I live in my 5th floor apartment in Dhaka and I never knew what struggle actually is in my life. I love when it’s raining with a mug of coffee in my hand but I didn’t see the other side of rainfall. The village where Sohellive is a low land. It remains under water for at least 3 months in rainy season. People go one place from another by boat. This is one of the remotest places in Bangladesh. There is no electricity where they live. They live in darkness. And they live by floating. No permanent thing in their lives.
As a civil and environmental major, I know that Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in South Asia. But I never knew how it really feels to live all the time with disasters. I started my work with a project called Climate Refugees of Bangladesh last year. This project has been led by Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. He is a former Fulbright Science and Technology Fellow and currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant, Cornell University. We have been trying to conceptualize the potential societal effects of climate change and general environmental degradation. We are focusing on the affected people and their stories. As a field researcher, I have been going from place to place to interview them: from the slums of Dhaka, the major capital, to the remotest village nears a billowy river. Some of these people have been forced to leave their homes in search of a new beginning. Some other people have been trying to adapt to this situation.
This project gave me a new perspective. Now, I realize how dangerous the threat of Climate Change for Bangladesh is. The planet we live in is getting warmer every year. We are looking forward to our future anxiously. We might have 1.5 or a 2.0 degree Celsius temperature increase by the end of the century. To save our planet we must stay below 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase. Because according to a study of European Geosciences Union the jump from 1.5 to 2 degrees raises the impact by about one third, of the phenomena studied. Heat waves would last around a third longer or rain storms would be about a third more intense. Also, the increase in sea level would be approximately a third higher and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that much greater. Don’t believe those people who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Homo sapiens held record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinction. Now it’s turn of the nature.
I’m scared. What will happen next if we have more intense disasters? Life loss can’t be reduced after a certain level. How will we handle the load of these climate affected communities? I’ve attended Asia Urban Youth Assembly this year at Melaka, Malaysia co-hosted by UN-Habitat. Where would we find habitation if the whole Bangladesh goes under water within this century? So, I told there as a representative of these people that we should follow an environment friendly development approach. We must have our vision to reduce our temperature increase. This is reality that Bangladesh does have a geographical weakness and adverse hydrological features. We contribute a little in warming but we are the most sufferer. These are the faults in our fate. But as a nation we have never been silent. We will definitely have to be concerned about this temperature increase and projected future problems and their sustainable solutions. Also we must raise our voice for global climate justice.
(Abdullah Hasan Safir is an undergrad student and enthusiast researcher, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET).
